House of 1000 Corpses

Lions Gate Films, 2003, Rated R,
1 hr. 28 min.

It's unusual that the Hauntmistress and I watch a movie and
come out of it so far apart in opinion. She loved it and I
nearly fell asleep. So with that in mind we decided we would
each write separate comments on the movie and let the reader
decide on their own who to believe.

The Hauntmistress' comments:

The best way to describe this movie is that it's like one
terrific, giant haunted house - weird, creepy, campy, funny, scary,
and gory.

Rob Zombie wrote, directed and scored this film set in 1977,
about two young couples driving across country to collect
information for a book they are writing about American roadside oddities.
With their journey nearly complete, they stop for gas on a stormy
Halloween night and discover Captain Spaulding's
Museum of Monsters and Madmen. Here they learn the legend of Dr. Satan,
a mad doctor who was hung for performing bizarre operations on
mental patients at the local sanatorium in an effort to create a
race of super humans. They are told the tree where he was
hung is nearby but his body
disappeared after the hanging and there is no grave. Some say
that Dr. Satan survived and continues his maniacal experiments.

The couples set out to find the
tree where Dr. Satan was hanged, but they get a flat tire on a
desolate country road. They are soon beset upon a
beautiful girl who offers help in the form of her brother's tow
truck. The couples end up back at the girl's house, where
her and her beyond psychotic family proceed to terrorize the couples in
a most gruesome
way.

Featuring, murder, cannibalism, and satanic rituals, this is a
wild romp through the sadistic (in a good way) mind of Rob
Zombie. This film was bounced from Universal Studios to
Lions Gate when Universal thought the movie would get an NC-17
rating (why make the damn NC-17 rating if studios are afraid to
use it?!). An unrated version will be released on DVD, and
I can't wait.

This film is incredibly well cast. The actors look
bizarre without make-up or costumes! But when make-up and
special effects are used, they're top-notch.

Adding to the haunted house feel of the movie is the camera
work, which at times is skewed and slips into 8mm-type scenes
with discoloration. Add to that the low-budget feel, and
it left me with the impression of stepping through different
rooms of a haunted house.

The soundtrack is blasting, at times weird, and fits
perfectly into the madcap world of the psychotic family, adding
an urgency and craziness to the scenes.

The movie has an overall disturbing quality about it; while
at times campy, it stops short of being over-the-top by the
acting and the plot.

I really enjoyed this movie and was scared and creeped out -
what more can you ask for in a horror movie?

Comments from the Hauntmaster:

What more could you ask for, you say? Well, quite a bit
actually. House of 1000 Corpses is at best fair. Certainly not
the end all, be all, defining horror movie of our generation as
was the buzz from many sources. Rob Zombie borrows heavily from
the top horror movies of the past. References to the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre movies, Hellraiser, Natural
Born Killers, and Last House on Dead End Street, among others abound. We are even treated to a
very nice reference to the Fiji
Mermaid that is quite amusing.

This isn't to say it is necessarily bad to borrow characters
and concepts and use them in interesting and new ways. Quite the
contrary in fact, take the X-Files for example. Very
little original material is in that series but they've taken our
culture's tales of the supernatural, the bizarre, and the
horrifying and put a fresh spin on them. It is, however, much less
interesting to see what is in essence a regurgitation of what
has been done before. For the most part that's all House of
1000 Corpses is, a regurgitation of what has already been
done.

Other elements that didn't work for me included the copious
amount of what I would call art house effects. Jump cutting,
split screens, blurred color negatives, non-linear shots, etc. While I believe
these were put into the movie to emphasize the bizarre, almost
surreal qualities of the film, they go on for far too long and
destroy the flow of the film. At more than one point I found
myself zoning out and looking for the TV remote only to realize
I'm at the theater. A more judicious use of these scenes might
have positively contributed to the movie.

Perhaps what bothers me the most is the complete lack of
logic in the story. I know there is a certain amount of suspension
of disbelief involved, after all, it's a movie, but come on. It's
hard to explain the lack of logic without totally spoiling the
film but let's just say that the Dr. Satan story has been around
for awhile (decades), the psychotic family isn't exactly
inexperienced (if you know what I mean), it's a rural area where
everybody knows everybody, and this is the first time the
sheriff has heard of anything creepy going on?

I
don't want to give the impression that the movie is entirely bad
because it isn't. The characters, even if we've seen most of
them before are interesting. They are played by a series of well-known and talented actors of the genre. Dr. Spaulding (Sid Haig)
in particular adds great comic relief and nails every line given
to him. I think the movie that should have been made would have
focused solely around his character and his roadside attraction,
as this is where my interest really was. Baby (Sheri Moon), the
slutty psycho, was wonderfully disturbing to say the least. I
think she could have played up the sexuality a bit more. I
wonder if that was held back because she is married to Rob
Zombie?

The overall evil, f**ked up funhouse atmosphere of the movie
was very nice. It reminded me of some of the rural funhouses I
went to as a kid and was never really sure what part of the
demented characters was an act and which part was real.

Even if it is a largely clichéd regurgitation, it is at
least interesting to watch the movie and try to name from
which movie each scene and character was inspired. I also
particularly enjoyed that it didn't have the typical Hollywood
happy ending. I won't say who lives and who dies but I was
pleased with the choices made.

To conclude, perhaps I expected far too much from House of
1000 Corpses. I certainly bought into the hype. If it was
released on time without the two-plus years of accumulated
speculation that nearly always arises with delayed releases, I
think I might have enjoyed it much more. Like I said in the
beginning though, it's a fair movie. Would I recommend this for
theater viewing? Probably not, at least not unless you
absolutely had to see a movie. This will be a fun rental though,
and by the time it is available for rental the much anticipated
directors cut will be available. Are we setting ourselves up
again?

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